Things in Nature Merely Grow
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Yiyun Li's remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James.
"There is no good way to say this," Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.
"There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home."
There is no good way to say this--because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, "a single point in a timeline." Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: "doing the things that work," including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.
This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving or mourning. As Li writes, "The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now." Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li's indomitable spirit.
About this Author
Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction--Wednesday's Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; The Vagrants; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers--and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize, and she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Reviews
"Transcendent . . . In sparing prose that cuts deeply, Li examines the relationship between language and loss, honoring the sons who she carries with her, always."
--Annabel Gutterman, TIME (Best Books of 2025 So Far)
"A meditative, unflinching exploration of loss . . . Li writes beautifully and honestly about this very thing, about how a person continues through the "now and now and now and now" of life after tragedy."
--Isle McElroy, New York (Best Books of 2025, So Far)
"In direct and unsparing reflections, Li confronts not only the loss of her children but the limits of language, as she tries to convey anguish that defies description."
--Alexandra Alter, The New York Times
"An ethereal memorial . . . Li quietly guides us through the devastation of living, and mothering, after death . . . She delivers an extraordinarily intellectual undertaking that transforms the motherhood memoir, always a fraught genre . . . A mother, she writes, cannot keep a child alive. In writing like Li's, however, even absent children can live on."
--Courtney Tenz, The Washington Post
"A tribute to radical acceptance and the lasting power of memory."
--Clare Mulroy, USA Today
"Unbearably poignant . . . Vital and tenderly written."
--Michael Magras, Shelf Awareness
"[Things in Nature Merely Grow] stuns with its lucidity . . . What is most striking about Li's book [is] not her grief, but her ability to move beyond guilt to understand 'that a mother could do all things humanly possible and sensible for a child but still could not keep him alive.'"
--Vikas Turakhia, The Minnesota Star Tribune
"[Li] is a master of words, a master of making ideas flow flawlessly from thought to paper . . . No matter where you stand on grief--whether you're entirely free of it, drowning in it, or somewhere in between--I suggest letting Yiyun Li's words wash over you, for in this tribute you may just find something in which to feel solace."
--Madeline Schultz, Chicago Review of Books
"Li's book doesn't offer the consolation of wisdom gained, nor a triumphant arc of recovery. Where it finds reassurance is in its rigorous observation of reality. Although Li resists the idea that she might be offering advice or inspiration, her cool-headed clarity does remind readers that it is possible to say the words there is 'no good way to say.' In saying them, she finds a means of survival."
--Helen Brown, Telegraph
"Things in Nature Merely Grow, [Li's] memoir of losing her sons, is resolutely unsentimental, and yet it might wind you with its emotional force."
--Sophie McBain, The Guardian
"To state that this courageous book is a testament to love is an understatement. One is left altered by it at the same time as desperately wishing that it had never needed to be written at all."
--Catherine Taylor, Observer
"Things in Nature Merely Grow is a story of loss that is unlike any other book I've read. It's a work of harsh beauty that exists in a different realm to most grief memoirs. That's partly because of its startling poise and emotional restraint, and partly because it describes a realm of experience that is exceptionally strange and terrible... It is an unforgettable monument to endurance, one that offers a kind of fierce comfort."
--Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times
"This book is everywhere marked by a mother's devotion to her children . . . [A] steely, heartbreaking, deeply moral tribute to [Li's] remarkable son."
--Jessi Jezewska Stevens, 4Columns
"[Things in Nature Merely Grow] is, among other things, a kind of manual on how to write honestly about the death of loved ones. Throughout, Li refreshingly refuses to indulge in the tired metaphorical thinking that death often invites . . . Li's style, honed over decades, has never been more distilled."
--Rhoda Feng, The Boston Globe
"Writers like to acknowledge the poverty of language, usually as we screw up the courage to try something fancy with it. Hordes of us are out there hoping to say the unsayable. Not Li. When she writes that 'words fall short,' she means it: the one stock phrase she likes is 'there is no good way to say this.' The power of Things in Nature Merely Grow resides in her refusal to pay obeisance to words."
--Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine
"Li's astonishing record of how she has chosen acceptance over despair shows why artists among us sometimes offer more wisdom than any other spirituality."
--Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
"Li does not shy away from the magnitude of these losses. Instead, she writes of radical acceptance, offering a profound look at how a parent continues to live in a world without her children."
--Shannon Carlin, TIME
"Things in Nature Merely Grow is an impossible book, yet through Li's deftness and determination she transforms the book into an intricate and nonlinear portrait of loss and love."
--Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books (Must-Read Books of May)
"These pages--refreshingly absent of euphemism, platitudes, false optimism, or an ounce of self-pity--provide something far more useful: a vision of maternal grief that is both brutally honest and, ultimately, survivable."
-- Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily
"Li manages the near impossible in a complex memoir that is as devastating as it is searingly insightful into the contours of grief and acceptance, recommended for anyone who is navigating the nonlinear timeline of loss."
--Greta Rainbow, Bustle (Best New Books of Spring)
"Li recounts both boys' lives with palpable love and paints complex, distinct portraits of each . . . Readers who've dealt with their own tragedies will find comfort and understanding here."
--Publishers Weekly
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